Last night, I watched an interesting tape of Zbig Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft appearing earlier in the day on Wolf Blitzer’s “Late Edition” on CNN.
These two old guys, respectively the National Security Advisors to Jimmy Carter and to George Bush I, evidently don’t feel they need to kowtow to the pro-Likud lobby any more, so they speak straightforwardly about how–from the perspective of their incontestably long experience in US national-security decisionmaking– they see the US-Israeli relationship, and the forces at work in today’s Bush administration…
At one point, Blitzer (whom I met a couple times back when he worked for the Jerusalem Post) said,
- now it’s apparen… that Saddam Hussein was plotting this insurgency all along, anticipating a U.S. assault. That would seem to be another intelligence blunder of huge import, and as a result a lot of Americans and others are dying.
Zbig replied,
- Well, it’s not just an intelligence blunder. It’s a question of the mindset. There was such fervor to go to war against Iraq. And it was propounded with such intensity and, I’m sorry to say, demagoguery by a bunch of fanatics that it was quite natural for them also to argue that it’s going to be very easy, that we’d be welcomed as liberators, that the aftermath would be very simple.
I think we’re dealing here with a problem which goes beyond intelligence. It’s a fundamental misjudgment, and it’s a consequence of a decision-making process in which skeptics, questioners, people who disagreed really didn’t play much of a role.
BLITZER: Well, you use a tough word, “fanatics.” Who do you mean, when you say fanatics, talking about fanatics?
BRZEZINSKI: I’m not going to mention names, but people who, either for religious or strategic reasons, have a very one-sided view of Iraq and of the Middle East and what needs to be done in the area.
BLITZER: When you say “religious reasons” — I’m pressing you, because these are strong words that you’re throwing out, and you’re a man of very precise language.
BRZEZINSKI: Well, I think we all know that in American politics, particularly in recent times, there has been an intensified linkage between extreme religious views and politics. And there are a number of people who have very, very intense feelings about the Middle East. And I think that has colored our approach to Iraq and has colored our assessments of what would happen.
BLITZER: Well, maybe I’m missing something. Are you talking about fundamentalist Christians? Are you talking about Jews? Specifically, what are you trying…
BRZEZINSKI: I’m talking about all of them. I’m talking about all of them: people who approach this issue with a very strong religious fervor or a kind of strategic fanaticism, the kind of fanaticism that leads some people currently, for example, to argue that we should attack Iran, that we should bomb Iran.
BLITZER: And is this related to support for Israel is coloring their…
- BRZEZINSKI: In some cases, I’m sure it is. In some cases, it isn’t. It’s a mixture.
You know, this is a very diversified country, and there’s a variety of viewpoints.
Later, Blitzer came to the topic of Iran. Scowcroft said he thought it was a worrying but probably manageable situation. Blitzer turned to Zbig:
- What’s your assessment, Dr. Brzezinski?
BRZEZINSKI: Well, first of all, I’m not terribly worried, but I agree with Brent.
BLITZER: Why aren’t you terribly worried?
BRZEZINSKI: Because for one thing, they are not about to have it. It will take several years for them really to have it. Secondly, what can they do with it as a practical matter? This is a serious country. This is not a fly-by-night fictional country that could act in a totally reckless fashion.
BLITZER: What about giving it to terrorists?
BRZEZINSKI: Oh, but would they want to do that? They have security problems, serious security problems around them. Pakistan, which is unstable, India, Russia, Israel, have nuclear weapons. They have a real security problem.
And the way to deal with this issue is the way Brent recommends, which is to try to work them into international system in which they can pursue their nuclear program on a peaceful basis, but they get some benefits from abandoning, forsaking the military program, and then eventually point towards some sort of an arrangement, some sort of an arrangement for a nuclear-free Middle East. Because less than that is not going to offer them a long-term inducement to eschew nuclear weapons.
So when was the last time you heard anyone in US politics even hint that the fact that Israel has nuclear weapons might, just might, be a factor motivating other Middle Eastern nations to get them?
Later, Blitzer came back to Scowcroft, and confronted him with this utterance, which he’d made to a Financial Times reporter in mid-October:
- In October, October 14th in The Financial Times, you were quoted as saying this: “Ariel Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger. I think the president is mesmerized. When there is a suicide attack followed up by a reprisal, Sharon calls the president and says, ‘I’m on the front line of terrorism,’ and the president says, ‘Yes, you are.’ He, Mr. Sharon, has been nothing but trouble.”
Did you say that?
SCOWCROFT: Unfortunately I did. It wasn’t supposed to be for publication.
BLITZER: This was in an off-the-record conversation?
SCOWCROFT: Yes. Yes.
BLITZER: And so it got out there.
SCOWCROFT: Yes.
BLITZER: And so explain to our viewers what you meant. And I assume you meant this, what you said.
SCOWCROFT: Well, I think the best explanation I have is what Dov Weisglass gave as to what Sharon’s strategy was.
BLITZER: He’s an aide to the prime minister?
SCOWCROFT: He’s an aide to the prime minister. Which was to get out of Gaza, because the Israeli position is pretty untenable, get out of one or two settlements, finish the wall, and then say, we’re through.
The administration has felt that Gaza was the first step in a program, and what I have been arguing is if Sharon has his way, it’s not the first step, it’s the last step.
BLITZER: But fundamentally, the question is this: Do you think Sharon has the president wrapped around his finger?
SCOWCROFT: That was — I would never have used that in public, of course not. But what I believe is that Sharon appeals to the president and his attitude on the war on terrorism, and he says “I’m on the front line of that war. The people after me are terrorists.” What is the president going to do? No, they’re not terrorists? In that sense, the president plays into Sharon’s plan.
BLITZER [to Brzezinski]: What do you think?
BRZEZINSKI: Well… I thought Brent’s diagnosis was brilliant. And I think one should say publicly what one says privately. And I agree with him.
BLITZER: You agree that what? Be specific.
BRZEZINSKI: Whatever you cited him as saying, the whole works.
BLITZER: That the president is basically controlled by Ariel Sharon?
BRZEZINSKI: “Controlled” is your word. I don’t think he said that.
BLITZER: Well, I’ll repeat. It says, “Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger.”
BRZEZINSKI: Yes, that’s about right.
BLITZER: That’s being precise.
BRZEZINSKI: Sharon comes and whispers “Terrorism, terrorism,” and the president is now…
BLITZER: But Israelis do face terrorism.
BRZEZINSKI: Of course. But this is not the whole problem. It is not the entire problem, and certainly not the global problem.
At the end, Blitzer asked the two old guys what the Prez should be doing on the Palestinian issue. And both of them came out in favor of the US– finally!– coming out with its own proposal for how the final-status should look, and “imposing” it:
- BRZEZINSKI: We should be doing what a friend of mine and a colleague of Brent’s recently recommended, Henry Kissinger. He said something with which I very much agree. We should be much more explicit about staking what the actual content, what the elements of a peace settlement ought to be, not leave that wide open.
Because if you leave it wide open, the Israelis and the Palestinians distrust one another so much that they’ll never move towards peace. But if we lay on the table a package — and there are several key elements of that package which are generally known and understood — and say, this is what the settlement will be based on, then I think we move the parties concerned toward serious negotiations.
BLITZER: …General Scowcroft — the U.S. sort of imposing a settlement on the Israelis and the Palestinians, or squeezing both sides to come up with some sort of solution. Is that something that would be a good idea?
SCOWCROFT: I have been opposed to that for most of this conflict. I think it is the only solution now. The two sides by themselves, the animosity is so deep and the mistrust is so wide that they can never do it by themselves. We have got to say, this is it. And you know, as Zbig says, the outlines of a settlement are really quite clear. There are a few rough edges that need to be honed off, but it is not difficult to see what a settlement is now. But we are the ones that have to impose it.
Of course, there’s a long, long history of high-level US officials talking as candidly as this– but only some time after they’ve left office. So you might say, in response to all the above, “So what?”
That’s partly my reaction. But still, it’s refreshing to see views like theirs even get an airing on national television at all these days. (It’s kind of sad, isn’t it, when you have to conclude it’s “refreshing” to hear members of the US political elite saying openly that, on an Israeli-Arab issue, the US should articulate and then stand up for our own national interests, rather than those of a single, tiny foreign power??)
And then, you have to wonder if Scowcroft is this time, as he has done in the past, expressing something in the public discourse–and to the present President– that George Bush Bush I wanted to see expressed…
Then again, you have to remember that the present Prez, by his own avowal, “answers to a higher father”, not the biological one.
I’m a novelist. As such, I find these character studies fascinating – a great journalist knows this, and I commend you, Helena. As a novelist interested in character and family dramas, I wonder about old George the First. What must he be thinking? He must be wondering about the place of his family in history. He cannot be happy about it. I like to think he’s even suffering. I like to think that he may feel the hubris, know it for what it is.
Strange that he looks like so much better of a President, now that we have his firstborn and namesake to compare. I marched in the street against Bush I, protesting the Gulf War. Never thought I’d say that I wish HW were President instead of his son. The ironies of history. And I’m only 42! Feel like I’ve seen several turns of the wheel already in this short life.
Well, I really should say something about the main idea here, but it is late and I am short of time, so I will just comment on two things that popped into my mind and stayed there as I read this:
1) I would expect to hear this “Saddam planned the insurgency (sic) all long” nonsense from the Bush administration, but it is disappointing to hear it from serious analysts, particularly at this point in the situtation. Even if there is some truth to it, we are so many light years beyond Saddam and anything he might have thought of that it is utterly, utterly irrelevant. In any case, Saddam was NOT behind the resistance in Falluja – that clearly began and grew as a reaction of Falluja’s residents to the actions of the occupation forces. He most assuredly was not behind the so-called “Sadr rebellions” of this last spring and summer.
Not a single person I know inside or outside Iraq who supports or is a member of the resistance has anything whatsoever to do with Saddam (on the other hand, many of the people who are now involved in the puppet government were very, very prominent Ba`thists who had quite a bit to do with Saddam at one time or another).
2) I am opposed to the idea of the U.S. trying to impose a settlement on the Palestinians for the simple reason that they have never been and never will be an “honest broker”. No settlement proposed or imposed by any American administration will ever give the Palestinians even the absolute minimum that they reasonably should be able to expect – true sovereignty in a viably contiguous territory with control over their borders, their resources, and freedom from some form of controlling Israeli presence. No Arab, let alone any Palestinian can honestly view the U.S. as an “honest broker”, and with good reason.
Shirin,
And how would you make the Palestinian territory contiguous without making the Isreali territory non-contiguous?
David
David,
Life’s a bitch, isn’t it?
Shirin
It’s certainly very interesting that these two came out as a chorus. I’m not sure that it qualifies them as honest men, but they’re definitely trying to raise some flags.
Thing is, anyway you look at it, we are in the shit. That is clearly the message from these two, we’ve burned the possiblity of playing coy with the Middle East, like they did. Either we use our dwindling capital to get things off the current track, or one or more of many possible disasters will probably occur.
I just wonder if they will have any effect. I doubt it. Cheney’s instinct is to roll the dice again.
Dick,
It’s too late.
That exchange was interesting to read with the fact that Wolf Blitzer is a former Israeli – a publicist for the IDF, no less – in mind.
And how would you make the Palestinian territory contiguous without making the Isreali territory non-contiguous?
There isn’t any “Isreali territory”. All of the settlements are illegal.
Brzezinski and Scowcroft on Middle Eastern Issues
Helena Cobban brings us this shockingly honest exchange involving the comments of two titans of the foreign policy establishment….
No Pref: I don’t think David was talking about settlements; I think he was asking how Gaza could be made contiguous with the West Bank. (Answer: via a tunnel or elevated highway that cuts across Israeli territory but is under Palestinian sovereignty. If you can get from point A to point B via surface transportation without going through customs, they’re contiguous.)
Of course I am referring to the fact that in two dimensions the problem has no solution. Shirin and No Preference: Were the Palestinian territories contiguous before the 1967 occupation? Nope. Why do they have to be now, to reward the Palestinians for decades of destruction and murder?
BTW, Mahmoud Abbas came out now to state that 4 years of Palestinian violence were a mistake. How about 56 years of violence being a mistake? He also apologized to Kuwait. There is nothing cheaper that talk after the fact.
David
Jonathan,
I don’t thing contiguous sovereignity means a tunnel between Gaza and the West Bank to Shirin or whoever is asking for that. Would you like to be an Israeli living right above a Palestinian tunnel. Last week they crammed 1.5 tons of explosives in a 100 meter tunnel. Imagine the party they can have on a 100 kilometer tunnel.
David
None of this matters now anyway. As refreshing as it is to see truth telling on a news broadcast again. The Bush administration’s plans will continue until there’s some cataclysmic force (economic depression, natural disaster etc.) that forces them to look in a different light.
Talking pundits are the last thing W.s cares about.
Ms. Cobban: Small Lesson on Israeli politics: Between 1948 and 1977 the left ruled the roost in Israeli politics. And the way the gov is set up opposition members are usually given senior portfolios. What does this mean in English? There is no cabal like likud plot. But you are way too smart to blame the Jews outright (because of course that would be antisemitic) so you might as well just go on blaming the likud or Ariel Sharon, Shylock etc.
Just to explain where I’m coming from before I comment on this entry — I support the Iraq war and firmly believe that as long as we both protect and keep control of the Kurds, it’s going to be a strategic plus, probably a large one.
So I naturally disagree with Zbig’s first point –the ones in charge know (vaguely) what they’re doing and within a decade, they’ll be proved correct.
On the question of Iranian nukes, I’m conflicted, but leaning towards militarily denying them nukes. With Iran we have a few more cards to play than most people aknowledge — there are 5-6 million Kurds in a fairly contigious area bordering Iraq, the Greater Azerbaijani movement, the Balochi Liberation Movement, the Turkomans… Helena, I’m sure you’d find the idea of exploiting these to be monstrous, but realpolitik and all that…Zbig’s timeline for nuke acquisition is too generous, and he sort of fails to look at the reaction of the Saudis, Egypt, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Syria and even a Shi’ite controlled Iraq. Iranian nukes are going to be destabilizing and there will be no way to exert much control over the reactions(over a 10-15 year period).
The Sharon little finger thing is bullshit, an illusion. Begin was also said to have control over Carter — that didn’t work out at all for him. Sharon has no real room to maneuver; he can only go one way and that’s out of the territories. He’s trying to exert control over how much to give up, but the settlements are unsustainable and he’s going to be outmaneuvered much like Begin was.
As for a U.S. dictated plan, it’ll probably come to that eventually, but it’s been in discussion for more than 20 years, so who knows when?
Anyway, I’ve never felt that Zbig had any understanding of the Middle East — he had nothing to offer in the late 70’s, his “Grand Chessboard” analysis of the region is like 15 pages, concentrating on Turkey and “The Choice” was superficial, hurried and prescribed nothing other than get the Israeli-Palestine conflict solved and watch the dominos fall (the domino thing never seems to fall out of favor, the dominos just keep changing). As for Scowcroft, I have no idea — he’s never really written anything substantial, but over his 30 years of service, he hasn’t been right more than he was wrong.
David, with all due respect to your incessant whining, you haven’t got the remotest clue what contiguous or anything else means to me or to anyone else who advocates for Palestinians’ rights.
Sorvigolova, I need read no further than your crap about protecting and controlling the Kurds to know you are a sick and ignorant racist.
Two HONEST men?
What induces you to think that not feeling “they need to kowtow to the pro-Likud lobby any more” has converted them into truth-talkers and no longer the fast pitching bait-and-switching they’ve spent their lives perfecting?
Concern over their karma coming home to roost?
Matt makes a good point about the Labor party. Settlements expanded more rapidly under Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barak than at any other time during the occupation. Nontheless, the Labor Party at least seems to be more naturally open to the principle of peace for land.
Matt blunders by suggesting that the only reason why anyone would object to Israeli settlements in the occupied territories is antisemitism. By that measure about 95% of the world is “antisemitic”. That’s just not the case. People object to the settlements because the Israelis have no legal right to settle someone else’s land.
sorvigolova, “hardheaded realism” such as yours got us into this mess. We don’t control the Kurds, and we can’t protect ourselves in Iraq.
David, after a fair peace settlement the Palestinians will have little interest in blowing up tunnels. The I/P conflict was very quiet during the first years following the Oslo Accords, when the Palestinian people thought they had been given a chance.
Shirin — you come off as very silly, throwing racist around left and right. The fact is, we have been and still are the only guarantors of the Iraqi Kurds. They are surrounded by powers who are very afraid of Kurdish independence. And we do need to restrain them, they want Kirkuk and a Greater Kurdistan which just isn’t possible and which, if attempted, will result in a messy war with everyone (Turks, Syrians, Iranians, Iraqi Arabs, Turkomans…) against the Kurds. That would be very bad and very, very violent. So perhaps control was too strong a word, but not far off.
No Preference — we’re not in a mess strategically (I just don’t see any scenario other than a war involving the Kurds that would be disadvantageous to US interests). The war is messy as they all are and certainly a lot of mistakes have been made. Still, we have mass on our side and that’s good enough in this case. As for “protecting ourselves in Iraq,” I have no idea what this means, if you can eloborate, that would be great.
sorvigolova, by “a mess” in Iraq I mean that our adventure there drastically worsened our standing in the world. The war has made a general struggle with the Muslim world more likely not only because it has antagonized them, but because it has hardened our own orientation towards force. We have antagonized not only the entire Muslim world, but also our allies. We are now seen around the world as the the biggest threat to world peace.
The invasion has created a war mentality that
1) makes it very difficult for us to consider whether our own errors in the Middle East have contributed to this crisis
2) erodes civil liberties
3) makes it harder to come to grips with the enormous fiscal crisis facing the country, which is being worsened by the billions we are spending on the open-ended war.
If we continue on this path we will see a long downturn in the international position of the US. The changing attitudes towards us will see to that, if nothing else. And attitudes have changed – not only in the Middle East and Europe but everywhere else as well.
By the way, are you Israeli? Just curious.
PS – by saying that we were unable to protect ourselves in Iraq, I meant that resistance to the US is growing, and we have been unable to protect either our own troops or our allies from the rising number of attacks.
Sorvigolova, you sound like a self-appointed imperialist AND a racist talking about controlling the world. If you would stick to just trying to control yourselves the entire world would be better off.
Kurds are not stupid. Kurds know how many times they have been seduced and betrayed and sold out by Europeans and Americans. Kurds fully expect that they will be betrayed and sold out again.
If you had kept your filthy hands off the Kurds in the first place the Kurds would not be in this situation. The Kurds would not be stuck with despotic, corrupt “leaders” who are just like mini-Saddams.
Leave Iraqis, including Kurds alone, for once, to settle our own affairs and stop your bloody murderous interfering.
Shirin,
Feel free to explain what contiguous means in your book. I think that Jonathan may also be in the dark as to what the hell you mean. Please spoon feed the readers, we are not all islamic radicals up to speed on your demands and terminology.
As for whinning, any objective reader must conclude that you should consider donating your spleen to science, just like Einstein donated his brain for study.
David
I’m with you, Shirin. Please carry on.
My position is the same as yours. In three words: Yankee, Go Home!
If David thinks that makes me an “islamic radical”, so be it.
David,
ZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I’m still trying to figure out just which alternative universe Sorvigolova lives in with: we’re not in a mess strategically (I just don’t see any scenario other than a war involving the Kurds that would be disadvantageous to US interests)
If the present situation is what notnot
Typical Shirin. Asked to define what contiguous means she runs away. Seriously, how can you expect your demands to be satisfied if you do’t care even to explain them.
Dominic, this movie wasn’t abou Yankees, you must have missed the beginning.
David
Oh, David, you put a person to sleep with your whining and your predictable games. I became bored decades ago playing these games, so I will not play with you. You will simply have to play with yourself.
Feel free to explain what contiguous means in your book. I think that Jonathan may also be in the dark as to what the hell you mean.
For what it’s worth, I knew what you meant and what Shirin meant. Contiguity is an ambiguous term in the Israeli-Palestinian context; sometimes it’s used to refer to contiguity within the West Bank, and other times to contiguity between the West Bank and Gaza. (One of the reasons I often see cited to “prove” that a two-state solution would be unviable, for instance, is that a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders would not be contiguous, meaning that the WB would be territorially separate from Gaza.) I don’t think either of you is correct in arguing that “contiguity” has a single, well-understood meaning in this context.
Feel free to explain what contiguous means in your book. I think that Jonathan may also be in the dark as to what the hell you mean.
For what it’s worth, I knew what you meant and what Shirin meant. Contiguity is an ambiguous term in the Israeli-Palestinian context; sometimes it’s used to refer to contiguity within the West Bank, and other times to contiguity between the West Bank and Gaza. (One of the reasons I often see cited to “prove” that a two-state solution would be unviable, for instance, is that a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders would not be contiguous, meaning that the WB would be territorially separate from Gaza.) I don’t think either of you is correct in arguing that “contiguity” has a single, well-understood meaning in this context.
Jonathan,
When one refers to “viably contiguous territory” as part of the minimum that Palestinians can reasonably expect, person of good will and a modicum of knowledge of the issues has a general sense what is meant. David is not a person of good will. David’s question was not an honest request for clarification, it was a not very subtle attempt to imply that there was something ominous in my very reasonable statement.
But I expect you knew that.
PS I cannot take David and his ilk at all seriously.
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